GRAPHINGAlgebraFigure 4 Cartesian Coordinate Plot of Radioactive Decayof Strontium 90If the same data, the decay of strontium 90, is plotted on semi-log, the resulting plot (Figure 5)will be a straight line. This is because the decay of radioactive material is an exponentialfunction. The resulting straight line of the semi-log plot allows a more accurate extrapolationor interpolation of the data than the curve obtained from the cartesian plot.For graphs in which both of the quantities (x,y) vary as a power function, a log-log plot isconvenient. A log-log plot is obtained by using logarithmic scales for both axes. Table 2 givesdata on the frequency of electromagnetic radiation as a function of the wavelength of theradiation. Figure 6 is a log-log plot of the data given in Table 2.MA-02 Page 78 Rev. 0
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